Possessed
by antisaints
Summary: On December 28th 1967, Ciel Phantomhive died in his bedroom. An exorcist, Father Ash Landers, and his aide Angela Blanc, were both arrested for negligent homicide. These are the events that led to his death. Sebastian/Ciel, AU.
1. February

_**Possessed  
><strong>__February_

Ciel Phantomhive was not a naturally superstitious person. To fully understand everything that happened to him, this is something one must constantly remember. He was _not_ superstitious. In truth, he wasn't even religious, which remains to this day a little known fact. A fact his mourning parents choose to ignore – but who can really argue with the logic of mourning parents?

It all _technically_ began on December 25th, 1966. Nine days past his fifteenth birthday, Ciel Phantomhive had been opening presents, just as any other child does on Christmas morning. His parents were there with him, all warm smiles and evergreen smells, watching their typically moody teenager's eyes light up as he tore open a box, revealing its contents. In 1966, the supernatural was flaring into popularity in an unprecedented way. But one must remember, Ciel was _not_ superstitious. He did not believe in ghosts, or monsters, or aliens in the sky – but that didn't take away the _novelty_ of it.

That Christmas, just one among many presents Vincent and Rachael Phantomhive bestowed upon their beautiful son, was a Ouija board.

An interesting thing to keep in mind is that Ouija boards are a relatively young invention, and more than anything, they are a game. Marketed for the first time as early as 1890, the idea that these boards actually have any mysterious powers to channel into the otherworld, it's preposterous. The Ouija board was merely an invention intended to take advantage of a market that was going through a phase of _loving_ the supernatural. It was a time when séances were held in private homes for fun, when people held murder parties while sipping tea or brandy, and anyone who was _anyone_ had a certifiably haunted house.

The 1960's and 1970's were another one of those flares. In that time, the sale of Ouija boards skyrocketed, and in the year Ciel Phantomhive received his very own Ouija board, a satanic panic was slowly brewing. It would boil over in the 70's and 80's, although Ciel would not be alive to witness it himself. No, instead, he was just a fifteen year old boy with an _extremely_ morbid little toy – a prototype that the Funtom Company had produced. It wasn't the cheap sort of Ouija board that Fuld was producing, no, the Funtom Ouija board was carved out of wood, and the planchette meant to glide across the board was made of an eerie black glass. It wasn't meant to be released for a couple of years, of course, but Ciel was used to getting Funtom prototypes for Christmas.

This prototype, however, he took a particular liking to.

Despite the fact that this tale began on the Christmas of 1966, Ciel did not touch the game for quite some time. Mature for his age, he spent quite a lot of time watching the news, and with the sheer amount of death occurring overseas, he didn't spend much time thinking about the game. When he would look at it, unopened in the top of his closet, he would scoff, all of the things he had to do appearing in his mind. At fifteen, he really didn't have a lot to do – after all, it wasn't as if _he_ was running a multimillion dollar toy company. But somehow, he was. Everything Vincent did, Ciel shadowed, knowing full well that after college, he would begin working within their company, and eventually inherit it. He kept himself busy, and once school started, forgot about the frivolous, beautiful little toy for a couple of months.

It was a snow day when he first cracked the seal on the box, sitting down on his bed and placing the game board in front of him. It had been a long time since Ciel had gone running into the snow, all delighted and sniffly to be playing in it – his asthma prevented running of almost any kind, and the snow always made him even more sickly than he was already. By fifteen, the entire novelty of the snow day had worn off, and so he'd gotten himself breakfast, kept warm in his pajamas, and spent most of the morning in his bedroom. Aside from its lovely design, there was nothing particularly threatening about the Ouija board. In black writing were the words YES and NO, the numbers 0-9, every letter in the alphabet, and GOODBYE. There was nothing inherently frightening about that. At 11:30, the black glass of the planchette no longer looked eerie, and with all of the light pouring into his bedroom, there was no need for a circle of movie-style candles.

As a not-superstitious person, Ciel expected no answer. The board games promised themselves to be _mystifying oracles_, but at best, Ciel expected an insight into his own subconscious. After all, that's how it must work. The one who uses it yearns for an answer, and subconsciously, their hands move towards certain letters, creating an answer. In a group, with more than one subconscious acting on the board, it's probably more interesting. And the dynamic of having a few genuine believers could make the experience frightening. No, he was expecting nothing. But he let his fingers rest on the glass planchette, closing his eyes.

"Is anyone here?"

He felt silly. There was, of course, no response.

"Is there anyone here?"

Again, no response. What a stupid toy. The label had said that it was meant to be used in groups of three or more. Perhaps it really did take three hands pulling on it for 'responses' to occur.

"My name is Ciel. I want to talk."

He felt a tug, then. A slight tug. But _no_, of course he didn't. He _pushed_ it, he must have, but slowly, the planchette dragged toward the H. It settled on it, before moving to E. L. L. O. Hello. Ciel frowned a little. His subconscious was both impressive and disappointing. Impressive because that had felt so _real_, like someone else was really pulling on the glass, and disappointing because the response was so trite. Still, his pulse had quickened. Perhaps this was the appeal. He cleared his throat, his hands feeling heavy now.

"What's your name?"

The planchette moved more quickly this time, dragging from the O through each row of letters, and for a moment Ciel thought it was going to slide all the way off the board before it settled on NO. His frowned deepened. "That's rude." And he wasn't sure if he was just imagining it then, but that weightiness in his hands seemed to vanish. He pulled them away from the glass, staring at the board, a clamminess working its way through him. He felt uncomfortable. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up, and a sheen of cold sweat was beading at his temple.

The doorbell rang, and Ciel nearly jumped out of his skin, both breathless from the discomfort that seemed to have wrapped itself around his heart and _squeezed_ and deeply thankful for the reason to leave the board. It was not like him to become frightened by something as… _stupid_ as a game meant to entertain girls at sleepovers. But it'd felt so heavy. His hands, his chest, the air he was breathing. He dashed out of his room, faster than he meant to in his desire to remain dignified, opening the front door to a very impeccably dressed Elizabeth Middleford.

It was a snow day, she'd explained excitedly, so of course they were going to spend it together! Ciel agreed with less fuss than usual. And within a little while, the game was all but forgotten. By the time he'd returned, the maid had been in, and had boxed the game up and put it back in his closet. So, not thinking about a thing, he took a warm shower, put on his pajamas, and slept a dreamless sleep.

It was probably over then. There is no real way of telling exactly what encounter was _the_ encounter, but what _is_ known is that the dreams began a week after the maid put the Ouija board away. They began as dreams, _not_ nightmares, and Ciel remembered few of them. What few he remembered were blurs of colors, hands on skin, and long, _long_ fingernails. Black fingernails. He remembered these terribly vague details for only seconds, and when asked about the dreams later, he would shrug it off and say in a standoffish way that they were "just dreams". Ciel woke up aroused to more than one of them, and that was after only a week.

The second time he opened the Ouija board, he was wary. Far more so than he'd been the first time. The atmosphere was far more frightening too, because he'd been unable to sleep, and he'd done all the things fifteen year old boys _did_ when they couldn't sleep. But none of them had worked. So slightly past three thirty in the morning, he'd slipped out of bed, opened his closet, and taken the box out. The wooden board felt heavier now, a reminder of its fine craftsmanship, far superior to the Fuld model of thin cardboard and a plastic planchette. Thinking about it in those terms made it seem less frightening. It's just a toy, after all. If it was truly dangerous, it wouldn't be on a market to _children_. He sat down on his bed, laying the board flat and the planchette in the center, watching the board for a moment before resting his fingers on the dark glass.

"Are you there? The one I spoke to before?"

The response was far quicker than either of his previous attempts at contact. The planchette under his hand moved sharply towards the YES, but that weight he'd sworn he'd felt before, that wasn't there. Now he was _sure_ it was all in his mind. And if he hadn't been awake for hours already, if he hadn't been so terribly tired, he might have stopped. But he was bored, itchy with that boredom, and the complete and utter _sureness_ that none of this was real, that all of this was a trick of his subconscious, was what made him ask:

"Are you in my house?"

The planchette almost quivered underneath him, before moving away slightly from the YES, and then returning to it. A typical answer of some stupid part of him that must love horror films.

"Where are you?"

The hair on his arms was standing up. Ciel didn't notice. The planchette slid slowly across the board, the noise of glass riding against wood soft and almost comforting. A reminder that this was nothing but a game. The glass pieced moved over the Y letter, and stilled completely. He frowned. How boring. And yet, it wasn't. There was a certain heat in the air, in his room which was on the bottommost floor of the mansion, per his request. The room buried in the dark, and the cold, was almost _buzzing_ with electricity, that thrummed through his body, starting at each finger that touched the glass and moving through him.

And then, like a crack, the planchette moved with such force that it disappeared from out from under his fingers.

O.

It stilled for only a second.

U.

It didn't still this time.

Y.

Ciel felt the blood drain out of his face, the electricity thrumming through him, the weight that had been in his hands now all over him, all _over him_, smothering him like

O.

an asthma attack, but stronger, far stronger. Like someone was sitting on his chest, pushing, pushing, pushing

U.

until he had nothing left.

The planchette continued to spin, cracking Y-O-U in a triangle on the board, Ciel on his back, gasping for air. Desperately, unendingly, _choking_, and to a child starving for breath, this moment was eternity, but to a man with a watch, it lasted only seconds. Seconds, before it was over.

The planchette snapped very still in the center of the board. The weight vanished. And Ciel, shaking and cold sweats all over his slight frame, caught his breath, fighting the asthmatic attack that he could feel coming on. He stumbled out of bed, running sluggishly into his bathroom and grabbing his inhaler. He pressed it to his lips and _once_, the medicine tasted as terrible as it ever did, _twice_, he could feel it working already, and part of that hard to be placebo but _thrice_, and he was calm. He was okay. (He was okay.) His hands shook, inhaler still clutched in his fist the way someone would clutch a flashlight in the darkness, or a gun at war.

The board waited for him, looking perfectly innocent and a little jostled in his scramble to get up, on the bed. The air felt lighter, colder, but he didn't remain a moment longer.

He slept in the library that night.

It remains disputed to this day as to whether he was sleeping alone.

xx

Hello! I am excited to present my first Black Butler fic, _Possessed_. I have already planned out each chapter, and I can safely tell you that there are eleven chapters to this fic, and there will (as always) be yaoi. This fic is rated M for later gore and smut. Above all, it is a horror story, so if you're freaked out by demonic possession even more than I am, I would not recommend reading this fanfic. It has also gone unbeta'd, sorry about the mistakes. For the few who do end up reading this, I would love some encouraging reviews 8D Thanks!


	2. March

_**Possessed  
><strong>__March_

Ciel did not touch the board after that, and with every passing day, it became easier and easier to throw out the idea that anything had happened had all. If Elizabeth had been there, she would have been very sure – no, _positive_ that she was being assaulted by some infernal forces, and told her stiff parents every detail. Then, she would have cried and cried until some change was made. She would have wanted an entirely new house, and if she'd explained the ordeal to her father and her father alone, she might have gotten it. Seeing as her mother was far more _rational_, Elizabeth would have probably just ended up trading rooms with one of her brothers. And of course, the Ouija board would have been burned, and Elizabeth would have gone to the school to have blessed by a priest.

Ciel, however, was not so foolish. No, in retrospect, his reaction seemed so _silly_. It was obvious that his fingers ending up flinging the planchette without him realizing it, so it gave the appearance of snapping out of his hand. Then, having successfully scared himself, he had an asthma attack. It was just… embarrassing. He was thankful no one had been there to see it.

Since the event, nothing much had really changed. Despite his growing confidence that he'd used the toy to successfully scare himself, Ciel _had_ thrown the thing out. If he could scare himself into having an asthma attack once, he could do it twice, and there was no joy in something that uncomfortable. Once thrown out, he'd resumed his life as normal. Each morning he woke, dressed himself in his school uniform, and left for school. His parents had meant well when enrolling him in Catholic school, but his faith had waned to nothing by about thirteen. At best, Ciel was an atheist. There was nothing out in the universe waiting for anyone, and it was a bit silly for people to still believe in monsters under the bed.

No, in Ciel's mind, it was an event he couldn't forget soon enough.

Vincent and Rachael Phantomhive, however, _did_ notice a difference in their son. It wasn't immediate, and they blamed themselves for this later, thinking that if _only_ they'd seen the signs earlier, maybe they could have done something. _Maybe_ they could have saved him. But this sign was so small, so insignificant, that if they could be blamed for everything else, they could _not_ be blamed for this. Ciel's appetite began to change. His appetite had always been flighty anyway, just as with all growing boys. But it was on an inconspicuous day in early March that Ciel decided he was going to stop eating breakfast. It had actually been a conscious decision, but only because he'd realized he'd been wasting Rachael's breakfasts for the last week, barely eating his eggs or taking one bite of toast. Neither of his parents noticed this, and neither of them should have.

Another change in his appetite, this one even _less_ noticeable, were his more frequently occurring bouts of binge eating. Again, this was left to the fact that he was a growing boy. Ciel would skip breakfast, pick at lunch, and have a salad for dinner. Pick at breakfast, skip lunch, say he had a massive lunch and skip dinner. And then, as if waking from a long dream, his stomach would suddenly _lurch_ with hunger, and he'd gorge himself. Sometimes it was at lunch, Elizabeth watching on with a bit of unmasked disgust in her eyes as Ciel would go through three plates of the cafeteria's standard issue Fish and Chips, three bottles of milk, and plate after plate of chocolate cake. Most of the time, though, it would be at breakfast. Ciel would tear through his own plate, then the leftover's his parents had abandoned, then a bowl of oatmeal, then a bowl of cereal, two bowls of cereal, four frozen waffles, four slices of toast. He'd eat and eat until the emptiness in his stomach vanished. And then he'd forget to eat for a few days.

But as startling as this behavior would be under the observing eyes of a psychologist, no one else found it entirely surprising. As effeminate as Ciel was, he was an adolescent boy. It meant his body was going to do things that didn't make logical sense. It meant he could grow two inches in a month, and subsequently lose all balance of his body. It meant he could develop muscle (should he want to) with only ten or fifteen reps at one of the gyms in the mansion. It meant that he'd be interested in girls, have entirely bizarre sleeping patterns, and yes. Eat strangely. It was only little Lizzie Middleford, who watched him starve or binge every day at school, that brought it up.

"Erm, Ciel?"

He looked up. Today, he was nibbling on an apple. He wasn't hungry. "Yes?"

"You should… eat. You're going to shrivel away like that."

He gave her a disapproving look, as if to tell her to mind her own business, but he would never say that out loud. They might be dating, after all. He didn't really know. As long as he could remember, Elizabeth had been at his side. They'd shared a few sticky kisses in their childhood, and a few more in his adolescence. When walking around together, she remained close, but at school would never go as far as to hold his hand. It was against school policy, and Ciel was mildly grateful. He didn't particularly like being touched, but being touched in public made him _extremely_ uncomfortable. On what Elizabeth (Lizzie, she'd told him to call her Lizzie because Elizabeth sounded _old_ and not cute) called _dates_, she'd hold his hand, kiss his cheek, and he'd long grown out of being _obviously_ repulsed by the actions. Internally, each kiss, sticky with gloss or staining with lipstick but _never_ just her lips – each was just a bit humiliating.

"I'm fine, Lizzie. Just not hungry today. I really overate at breakfast."

She frowned. "But isn't it healthier to… I don't know. Eat normal-sized, three times a day?"

"Probably." He shrugged dismissively. "So, what are you doing for spring break?"

The distraction worked, as she launched into a description of a lovely cruise she was going on, a beautiful _Titanic_ style ship with better safety features. He'd laughed, expressed how he'd wished he was going too (a brief vacation with Lizzie was _still_ a vacation, and he loved sailing) – and the two of them mourned about it, as lovers do. It was normal. And Elizabeth didn't bring up his eating habits again.

When Spring Break did arrive, the Phantomhives bid the Middlefords _bon voyage_, and a day later, took a train together to Paris to spend the break with Ciel's lovely aunt. They did this rather often, and in his youth, these trips were something he very much looked forward to. Aunt Angelina was flamboyant, glamorous, beautiful, _and _brilliant. People looked at her, with her socialite lifestyle, and expected her to say she was a former model, still working in the fashion business as maybe a designer, or a magazine editor. Instead, she was a plastic surgeon, which was so shocking to those who meet her that it was almost _equally_ glamorous as saying she was a model. She'd cut into the faces, breasts, and buttocks of anyone who was anyone, and could command attention in ways other people could only _hope_ to.

And, to a degree, Ciel did still enjoy these trips. He just ended up spending much more time _alone_ than he ever did before – and that was by choice.

Aunt Angelina was changing. Every year they'd been to see her, it became more apparent. Although she projected outwardly a love of her socialite lifestyle, the loneliness and even _jealousy_ in her eyes was becoming more and more evident with each visit. What were once long conversations full of laughter became filled with uncomfortable silences, and so Ciel spent most of his days out in Paris, visiting all of his favorite cafes, sipping tea under umbrellas, taking the boat tours, seeing the Louvre.

At night, he was plagued with nightmares. In the beginning, they were just dreams. Blurs of color, sensations, nothing recognizable but an overall sensual tone that left him yearning when he woke, and he'd try to think of Elizabeth when he'd masturbate but it usually ended up ruining it. He attributed that to the fact that he remembered Elizabeth at five years old, that he could see that version of her so clearly that he felt dirty imagining her naked. The few times he'd climax after those dreams, thoughts of her were gone, and in her stead long, raking fingernails, black nails dragging over his thighs, his shoulders, indistinct but terribly erotic. _That_ had been at first. And he hadn't minded them terribly, not _terribly_.

The nightmares were entirely different. He dreamed of indistinct figures clawing at his skin, tearing into his chest, opening it up for the word to see and mouths at his heart, licking, sucking, _eating _it right out of his chest as he screamed and screamed, screamed until it was over, until he was dead, until one of his parents shook him awake, startled and frightened and yelling in his ear about how "Baby, it's just a dream! Wake up!"

And the moment he would wake, he would forget him. Only the terror, the terror that knew no name or face or even the vaguest _description_, remained.

They left France the night before school resumed, and Ciel was _exhausted_. He napped dreamlessly through the two hour train ride, and his parents worried for him then, that was when the worry had fully begun. But when awake he would chide them, throwing their words in their faces and reminding them how they were "just dreams." This seemed to sate Vincent's nerves, but not Rachael's.

Once at the house, Ciel stuffed blankets in the crack of his bedroom door, so if he started screaming, it would be quieter. Maybe it wouldn't carry all the way to his parent's room. By then, he'd lost three pounds. Despite his cycle of binging and starving, his binges weren't frequent enough to offset the sheer amount of calories he wasn't eating during the week. The three pounds he'd lost was hardly noticeable, just a little bit of baby fat out of his face, which everyone mistook for him finally "filling out". Elizabeth mourned the loss of his cuteness, and Ciel – had he been a bit more suave – would have told her that she was cute enough for the both of them. But he wasn't suave, so he'd said something along the lines of "I'm not supposed to be _cute_ at my age, I'm a guy…"

He slept during class. This statement, just by itself, is somewhat _incredible_. Ciel Phantomhive, even at his brattiest age, had never disrespected teachers. He'd not gotten in physical fights, he'd not chewed gum or eaten food when he wasn't supposed to, he'd always been ready with an answer when called on. Every report card came home with A*s, filled with notes about how he would be absolutely perfect if _only_ he was a little more social. A little less distant. But aside from Ciel's tendency to be a loner, he was positively model. So it was incredulous that Ciel was _sleeping_ in class, and on the first day, his teachers prodded him awake. The second day, they felt sorry for him, and let him sleep. And the third day, per school policy, they were forced to call his parents.

Vincent had been almost livid when Ciel's teacher, Sister Katherine, had informed him that his son was slacking off in classes. His father had taken away his television and told him that if he got another phone call, he'd be punished much more severely. Ciel didn't really know what that meant, but it scared him. He'd been in trouble with his parents before, but _never_ had he been in trouble over school, so he made a concentrated effort to _stop_ having nightmares. Unfortunately, this ended up an impossible feat.

Every night, they were there. Machetes digging into his gut, cutting it open, the _slap_ of intestines as they spilled out of him and hit the concrete floor, the agony as he was forced to endure it, endure it, because he never was given the chance to die in these dreams. He could feel the teeth _grinding_ through his organs, masticating him, tearing through the tissue and a series of snaps as it caved like rubber. And he would scream. And scream. The next night, they were making him eat his fingers. The next night, they ate his genitals, then his pelvis, up his abdomen, grinding through bone, drinking the marrow, eating, eating, _eating_.

Ciel had perfected soundproofing his room by then.

By the end of the month, he'd stopped sleeping most nights. It was easier to simply _not sleep_ and drink coffee, because there was always a point when someone who hasn't slept in days becomes high. Running on nothing, but terribly awake, jittery, giggly. Ciel liked that high. Elizabeth found the change in behavior disturbing, until Ciel began to kiss her more in those days when he would be shaking with energy, and she _liked_ kissing Ciel, so she couldn't _really_ complain. It was nice, feeling like he wanted her.

After three days and nights without sleeping, Ciel found his body would need to sleep so much by then that he wouldn't dream. It mirrored his eating. He'd pick at food, and then gorge himself. The difference here was that staying awake was far harder than not eating because his body _needed_ it, needed it desperately. But he fought it. Because even if he slept, a sleep full of nightmares left him feeling less rested than no sleep at all.

He had been sitting in his bedroom, doing math problems at a little past three thirty in the morning, rocking lightly and hands shaking messily when he could have sworn he heard someone laughing.

xx

Hello again! Thank you for sticking with me to chapter 2 :) And a big thank you to my beta reader, **Ms-Psuedo-Writer**, for her help in making this fic suitable for human viewing. I will be updating every Wednesday, and already have several chapters written out ahead, so I'm almost positive this won't end up like my other multichapters bahaha. If you'd be so kind, please **review**! Feedback keeps me motivated and inspired, and sometimes people say just the right thing to give me just the right idea for the story's progression. Thanks again!


	3. April

_**Possessed  
><strong>__April_

Ciel was breaking.

Rachael was worried. Vincent, although still a bit sore about the idea of his son, a _Phantomhive_, disrespecting a teacher and a daughter of the lord… he was worried too. The nightmares seemed to have stopped, but their son looked more tired than ever. Dark circles surrounded his large eyes, he couldn't seem to sit still anymore, and perhaps what disturbed her the most, the boy was barely eating. He'd lost almost ten pounds, and being rather slight already, he was beginning to look emaciated. Was he depressed? Had Elizabeth broken his heart? All pleas for answers were returned with clipped "I'm fines". And she had absolutely no idea what to do.

Vincent had walked into his son's room unannounced and was met with Ciel _screaming _ at him to get out, and to knock the next time if he wanted to come in. The unabashed disrespect had angered him so much he'd nearly raised a hand to his boy, hoping to knock some sense into him, but he'd looked into his son, really _looked_ into his son, and realized he was sick. The boy had lost weight, looked frail, looked like he was _dying_, really. And that sight disturbed him. He'd left Ciel's room, shutting the door behind him, and had not forgotten to knock since.

Rachael began attempting to feed him more. The result was aggressive outbursts. After a couple of practiced, calm responses where he'd say something along the lines of "I'm really not hungry", Ciel would positively _lose it_.

"Leave me alone! God, _fuck_, you never leave me alone! What is it about _I'm not hungry_ that does not translate through your stupid skull?"

This was not her son. Not her Ciel. After the third outburst in a week, Ciel flipped the dining table. In a normal home, where the dining table is light and the tableware is mostly plastic, this would be an easy feat. The Phantomhive's dining table was made of solid oak, a true antique, made to seat as many as thirty people. The glassware was thin China, but _very_ heavy vases sat on this massive piece, but without a second thought, Ciel yet out a scream of frustration and turned it over. Collectively, it probably all weighed over a thousand pounds. The meal flew to the floor, vases and dishware shattered, and Rachael was stunned. Vincent had been at work, then, and out of fear for his reaction (he was not a violent man, but he was becoming an increasingly more desperate man), she had all of the help work together to make the dining room look like nothing had happened.

Occasionally, her baby boy seemed to resurface. He would drift out of his room and embrace her, apologizing profusely, eating as much as he could, and sleeping undisturbed for hours. During these moments, he'd shadow Vincent the way he used to. Spend time in the library, reading his favorite novels or doing homework. He could even be found in the living room, watching television. But for the most part, Rachael was scared. Vincent wasn't quite as frightened for him, but if he knew all that Rachael was keeping from him, he probably would be.

Ciel finally snapped around the middle of the month.

Elizabeth hadn't been in school that day. She'd caught herself a nasty little summer cold, the kind one only gets from hot drafts in cold homes, and she'd stayed home to fight it, her family doting on her. In her absence, he needed even more coffee than usual. What _is_ known about the incident is that Ciel had been suffering from caffeine poisoning by then, and he'd not slept in six days. It is unknown when he'd last eaten. Most would say Ciel just went crazy, but he didn't. No one just _goes_ crazy.

He'd visited the nurse's office, because his stomach had been hurting. Most people have experienced caffeine sickness at one point or another – drinking coffee with no food in your stomach will cause that discomfort. But no amount of discomfort excused what Ciel did.

Her name was Sister Anna. She was seventy-one. A little plump, certainly kind, and only looking out for him. She'd seen him twitching, sweating, and had reached out to feel his forehead. It was that innocent. The sort of thing you do with every child who comes in, because the thermometer worked but she'd been at the school for years, since she was young and tempting, and so she had no way of knowing that Ciel would feel a thrum of electricity run through him before he_ lunged_ at her. He grabbed her by the head and _slammed_ it into the concrete floor, and her screams were the heart wrenching sort that only those who are truly innocent could utter. He smashed her head into the floor and reeled his small fist back, punching her in the nose with an incredible amount of force. It practically _caved_ underneath him.

Sister Anna was lucky because they got Ciel off her quickly. There's no way of knowing what else he would have done, if he would have stopped, if he would have broken much more of hers than her nose. She was lucky because they got her to a hospital quickly, because there were shards of cartilage loose in her face, shards that could have imbedded into her brain. She was lucky.

Ciel was expelled. It was only because of the time, the place, and the Phantomhive's money that he didn't end up in Juvenile court. Instead, he's taken to a hospital for a psychological evaluation. Vincent didn't know what to say, and Rachael won't stop crying. Elizabeth can't believe it when she hears it, and is forbidden by her family to see him again. She screams and cries and tells her family how much she hates them, how they're punishing her for Ciel's behavior, but not even her father wavers a little. The Middlefords were ahead of the curve. They decided Ciel was dangerous, and exorcised him from their lives. It was the most intelligent decision any of them ever made, and none would know it.

He's taken to a different hospital than Sister Anna for his evaluation. By then, he's completely lucid. How Ciel managed to go home that day, no one _really_ knows. It's speculated that once again, the Phantomhive's money had something to do with it. That Vincent might have tried to do damage control to his family name by bribing the psychiatrist. Others speculate that Ciel managed to charm the psychiatrist himself, expressing deep remorse and saying all of the right things. Taking responsibility for his actions, regretting it properly, not disassociating in any way. Another possibility is that the psychiatrist simply didn't want to put what appeared to be a starving child in a mental hospital, where he would be eaten alive. Whatever it was, Ciel walked. Ciel snapped, attacked a seventy year old woman, and was not held accountable for any of his actions, with the exception of his expulsion.

If there were any moment that the Phantomhives should have regretted, it was this one. They should have locked him up where people could keep him safe. They should have forgotten their pride and kept Ciel in four walls, restrained, where he could not be touched further. Where he could not hurt anyone else. Instead, they took him home. Rachael had finally stopped crying, Vincent was staring into space like he was yearning to wake up from a nightmare, and Ciel looked glazed over. Like he was sleepwalking.

Vincent didn't know how to punish him. He didn't even know where to begin. Ciel drifted down into his bedroom and slept, and he stayed upstairs with his wife, attempting to comfort her.

"What do we do, Vincent?" She was trembling. In his mind, he could still see Sister Anna's face. It was _bashed in_. Less like he's punched her, and more like he'd hit her with a hammer.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"He attacked someone! We have to do something!"

"What do you want to do, Rachael? Put him in a basket and leave him in front of the prison?"

She burst into tears, and Vincent regretted his words. He'd been doing a lot of that lately. Regretting his words. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close, so her face pressed into his shoulder. She was sobbing. And to an ordinary person, this might be considered an extreme reaction, but he understood it. Ciel had changed. He'd stopped eating. Barely slept. When he did sleep, he screamed, and even though it was muffled with the blankets in the door, they still heard it. He'd convinced Rachael long ago to stop going to him, to let him work it out. He'd been so sure that if the just closed their eyes and ignored it, it would all go away, just like every other awkward adolescent phase Ciel had gone through. But it wasn't going away.

(Sister Anna's face.)

It was getting worse.

(Crushed like a bag of crisps.)

It was getting _much_ worse.

(Flakes of bone, floating in her face, scraping at her brain.)

And he had no idea what to do.

(Like tearing into the flesh of a grapefruit. _Ciel_ did that.)

In the end, there was nothing they really could do. Elizabeth's mother came by to return a box of things Ciel had given her daughter, because it was too painful for Elizabeth to look at these things, knowing they wouldn't be together again. Rachael had a feeling that Elizabeth had no idea her mother was getting rid of it, but took it all the same, trying to ignore Mrs. Middleford's hard, judgmental eyes. The eyes that reminded her how poor of a mother she was, to have raised such a terrible child. A violent child. She brought the box to Ciel's room, knocking on the door but leaving it in the hallway. It pained her, but Rachael was frightened. Frightened of _Ciel_. Her asthmatic, feminine son, who never could play sports and she kept homeschooled for years because she was afraid the other kids would beat him up. The Ciel she'd babied terribly, sung him lullabies, snuck books into his room when it was after lights out, and always had given far too many sweets. She was afraid.

After the assault, the days dragged on. Ciel no longer had any reason to be awake, any valid reason to be drinking cup after cup of coffee, any research papers he had to stay up to write, or exams the next day. Elizabeth had been forbidden to see him, and there was no chance of returning to school until next Fall. During the day, he tried to be normal. He _tried_. He hated the way his parents looked at him, the way most people look at snakes and spiders, but he couldn't really blame them. He'd attacked someone. A _nurse_. An old lady who had no chance. He'd wanted to write her a letter of apology, and actually had drafted a couple, but he had no idea what to say. _I'm sorry I broke your nose without provocation. I'm sorry you had to undergo reconstructive surgery. I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

He kept going through it in his mind. It didn't make sense. He could remember being _so angry_, but he couldn't remember why. She'd touched him, yes. On the forehead. It wasn't as if he liked being touched, but he'd been touched far more by plenty of others, and he'd never gotten even _close_ to being that upset. But in that moment, it was like he was on fire. Like a bull seeing red. He'd _never_ felt that kind of rage before, and feeling that sort of anger… it scared him. The days dragged on, and his calm periods became shorter and shorter. The periods without eating, longer and longer.

Eventually, he stopped fighting sleep. The nightmares didn't stop, but he didn't have to attempt to function in the day, so he didn't care. Vincent, unsure of how to converse with his son, brought him his television back. Ciel, somewhere deep underneath his explosive temper, excessive moodswings, and slowly developing depression, appreciated that. Weak from malnourishment, he spent most of his days in bed. When the rainy season began, he didn't even have to think of an excuse anymore. He would just lay in bed, the TV pushed as close to it as the chord would allow, watching footage from the American/Vietnam conflict.

Some nights, he masturbated to the videos of soldiers being killed. Sometimes he scratched his face while he did so. A few months ago – maybe even _a_ month ago, this would have disturbed him. Disgusted him. Now, it seemed the only natural thing there was. When he drew blood, he'd climax much harder, so he dug his nails in as deep as they'd go and (tear, just like in the dreams, teeth grinding, masticating through his tissues, muscles, tonguing through the waxy straws of his veins, violating, violating) _ripping_ his cheek open as best he could. And _fuck_, it felt divine, something inside him assured him so, as he watched a shower of bullets turn a human head into raspberry jam inside a bullet resistant helmet.

Ciel had broken.

xx

Hello! And thank you for reading the third installment of Possessed. To all of my reviewers, thank you for the kind feedback. To the one who asked if the whole fic was going to be like this: …yes? Although Sebastian, Claude, and many other characters will be making an appearance in Chapter 5. But until then, it's all Ciel. As usual, please review if you enjoyed this – or if you didn't! I love constructive critique. Thanks again for reading!


	4. May

_**Possessed  
><strong>__May_

For Ciel Phantomhive, May was the calm before the storm. Things slowly, steadily began to improve for him. And it did not go unnoticed by his parents.

Rachael was delighted when she noticed him out in the house again, if only for a few minutes at a time, instead of shut up in his room. On May 3rd, he fetched a book from the library. A few days later, he returned it and swapped it for three more. On the 10th, he said hello to her, and didn't seem like he was about to start screaming in rage at the sight of her. They were small improvements, improvements Vincent mostly dismissed and told her not to get too hopeful, until one night Ciel came out to dinner. He binged, of course. He hadn't eaten in days up until that point, and he was so _weak_, not even hungry but terribly weak, and he needed food to survive. The hunger, not in his stomach but deeper than that, the hunger that had him scratching his face, shoulders, thighs, the hunger that snapped at his entrails in his sleep, the hunger he couldn't name but was always there – it had told him to eat. So he did.

But he didn't vanish immediately after binging. He didn't smash a plate or two, either. He sat still at the table, full and staring at the vase in the center, both of his parents sitting across from him and both of them watching him like he was a live, pinless grenade. But he didn't explode – he _cried_. He _sobbed_, his desperation carved onto his features like the many cuts on his cheeks, and any fear of him was abandoned when Rachael dashed around the table to hold him. To press him close. She cried too. Maybe she was hoping that this would be the end of it. That Ciel had fully realized all he had done, and that his tears were his apology, that he was confirming that yes, he was going to change, and everything would be alright. Vincent expected that was what she thought, because for a brief, _brief_ moment, it was what _he_ thought.

The next morning, Ciel accepted the plate of breakfast Rachael had left outside of his door. Usually, he didn't even both touching it. On this day, it returned to the hallway an hour later, with over half of it gone. Despite that his appetite was returning, Ciel didn't feel any better. Yes, there was a bit of energy to him, but having energy meant he was alert, and being alert was not necessarily a good thing. He was noticing things. Things that had to have been there before, but had he just never heard them? Or was this a new dimension to the insanity that had consumed him?

It started with the rats. Little scratching sounds coming from the walls, the ceiling, paws tearing into the wood of the Phantomhive estate, and it seemed to come from all sides. Their butler Tanaka had stopped coming by Ciel's room to get the laundry (too many aggressive responses, and Rachael's request) but he expected it was Tanaka who retrieved the dirty dishes from outside his bedroom door. So he left a note, mentioning something about the rats and telling him to set some traps. If Tanaka didn't find it himself, it would be his mother or the other maid, so the message would inevitably be passed on. But despite the note, and despite him being able to hear people setting them up around the home (a sound that was unmistakable, if the chorus of shrieks as they accidentally detonated the trap was any indication) the noise didn't cease.

Most frustrating about the rats was that he couldn't seem to hear them in the _other_ rooms of the house. No, it was as if they'd boxed in the walls, floor, and ceiling of his room alone, always shuffling, tearing through fiberglass, cannibalizing one another when a food source didn't present itself. He could hear these things, these specific little interactions between them, or maybe he couldn't hear those interactions at all, but was becoming so stir crazy from the constant noise that he imagined it. Still, that constant noise, all those little claws scratching at the wood that boxed him in from all sides, it actually seemed to calm him at night.

Rachael could hardly believe her eyes when she passed by Ciel's room and found the door cracked. She thought it much too good to be true when she saw her son napping in his bed, the scratches in his face looking old now, well treated so they wouldn't scar. She hadn't seen a new one all month. Surely, she thought, this was too good to be true. Or maybe, just _maybe_, her Ciel was getting better. That was he going to get through whatever madness had taken him and come out the other side of it, as the same boy she always knew. Maybe. She watched him sleep for a moment, not daring to actually _enter_ the room and maybe touch his face, play with his hair in that soothing way mothers do – no. She couldn't do that yet. But maybe soon. She'd been so happy she'd called Vincent at work to tell him, and even he, who had treaded on this whole affair with the lightest feet, sounded as ecstatic as she felt at the news.

Ciel was getting better. Whatever madness had consumed him, he was _getting better_.

By the second week of the month, he was eating daily, and not binging ever. Usually only twice a day because he ended up sleeping through at least one meal, and the trademark love of sweets his parents associated with their son had yet to return. But he was eating. He was sleeping, too. He still had nightmares, but Ciel noted it wasn't _every_ night. It seemed to partially depend on when he slept. If he slept during the day, he slept dreamlessly, and often woke up sweaty and stuffy but otherwise rested. If he slept at night, he dreamed of monsters, of claws, of skin shredding and tissue snapping and organs bursting like tender fruit. Of greedy mouths waiting patiently beneath him as he was gutted, for their meal to fall right into their mouths, lapping blood and moaning in delight with it. Dreams of fingers digging into his chest, tearing apart his ribcage, pushing his lungs and heart aside, and looking for something else, something deeper.

So he slept during the day. He ate when he could. He even began to put back on some of the weight he'd lost, and his parent's couldn't be happier. Although he took most of his meals in his room, occasionally he'd have dinner so he could see his father, and he'd try to give him the sort of looks that say (I'm sorry, I'm sorry for what I've done) and he didn't know if Vincent understood it, but he hoped he did. He couldn't simply say he was sorry. It wasn't even a pride thing. He just… couldn't.

At night, when he was awake, he usually watched TV, trying to ignore the rats. He made a point to not watch the news, and he tried to masturbate less and less, because he felt like whatever sickness had consumed him, the thrill he got from seeing those soldiers die was a part of it. Instead, he watched a lot of American television, since English television wasn't entirely interesting. He found he liked late night TV, it was mostly talk shows, and they were trying to talk about anything but the war.

As difficult to ignore as the rats were the odd things he saw out of the corner of his eye, when sitting up watching TV well past midnight. Again, it was hard to determine if he _always_ had seen these things, or if this was a new development, but the rational part of his mind insisted that of course, they'd always been there. It's what happens when you sit in the dark. You see something that shouldn't be there. _Couldn't_ be there. Out of the corner of your eye. Then you turn to look, and there's nothing. It happens to everyone, Ciel reasoned. But the less than rational part of his mind feared the day when he'd turn to look and it would be there, that nameless, ageless fear.

Over halfway through the month, things seemed normal. Normal, except for the fact that Ciel slept during the day and stayed awake at night, but aside from that… they were almost normal. Ciel joined them for dinner and sometimes breakfast, if he wasn't already asleep by then. He asked Vincent about how the business was going, how Rachael was feeling, and when they ran out of things to say, discussed how bad the weather was. Summer had begun, and with it, all the rain they could stand. Things that _no one_ talked about included school, Elizabeth, and the assault on Sister Anna, which both Vincent and Rachael agreed would be too much for Ciel's unstable psyche. In turn, Ciel didn't bring up any of these things either, and hoped daily it wasn't the day when his parents would demand an explanation for everything that had happened.

Because he simply didn't have one.

The bruises came last. Ciel didn't know how he had gotten them, but they started appearing, none particularly large or frightening but certainly phantom in a way that made him uncomfortable. Scatters of them on his thighs, a couple on his shoulders, and on his torso. They were never too large, and within a matter of days they'd vanish. It was what it was. He never mentioned the bruises to his parents – they'd worried enough in his name – and after a while, he stopped actively noticing them himself. They were, after all, just bruises. Aftermaths of pain he did not remember experiencing. And as long as it was pain _he_ didn't experience, how much could he complain? He was okay. He was getting better. He was _going_ to get better, he just had to.

May was the calm before the storm. Most of it, in any case. And for a moment, Ciel had dared to think his madness was over. His parents, too, had _dared_ to think his madness was over. But the madness of Ciel Phantomhive would never be over, not until he died seven months later, leaving behind him a trail of human wreckage and loss.

The storm came the last week of the month. He'd tell the doctors later that he didn't really know _how_ it had happened, that one minute he'd been fine and the next, it was as if he'd been out of his body, watching himself do what he did. These words are not uncommon from the mouths of the insane, disassociating themselves from their own actions, but Ciel's own testimony is important. Because people tend to forget that not three months before this happened, he had been a completely sane, fifteen year old boy. And of course, not superstitious. People forget that. Of all of the books that have been written about this incident, his _story_, people always forget that before everything happened he had shown no sign of mental illness. He spent the weekends with his girlfriend, did very well in school, and had a close relationship with his family.

Ciel, at one point, was very, _very_ normal.

He'd been sitting on his bed, reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, when he'd felt his toes begin to go numb. It was no cause for alarm, of course, he'd been sitting cross legged, so he'd shifted, but the sensation continued. It crawled slowly up his feet, to his ankles, relaxing a little bit of discomfort he'd been feeling there into nothingness. It was _nice_. It was like his feet were made of air. Then his legs. If he couldn't see them, he wouldn't believe they were there. True numbness to most people is a terrifying feeling, but at this moment, for Ciel, it was comparable with orgasm. Not in terms of ecstasy, but in the… relief. It crawled up past his thighs, and it was only when he couldn't feel them anymore that Ciel realized how much pain he was in. Setting down the book, he touched his knee, and although he could _feel_ himself with his hand, there was no response in his leg. His hand could feel his leg, but not vice versa, and it was… it was nice.

The numbness crawled up to his hips, and he turned to lay down, content to let it have him. Being completely numb sounded perfect, if only for a while. It occurred to him for a moment that maybe something was wrong, that he might even be dying, but if dying was this bliss, it'd be alright. It crawled up his torso, the near constant tension in his back disappearing, and he let out a sigh. This was good. Up, up his torso, then in his fingers, up his hands, up his arms. Sensations were pesky, he decided. If this was what not feeling was like, why feel at all? If this was what people who did drugs felt, why had it never occurred to him to try them? This was…

It climbed up through his face, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was staring at himself. He was still numb. Wonderfully, blissfully numb. And still in bed. But he was staring at himself. The _other_ self was on the floor; his body contorted and eyes dilated black, breathing raggedly. With every moment, he heard something crack. _Crack_ as the figure snapped its shoulder out of place. _Crack_ as it broke one of its own fingers, shuddering, spitting, feet digging into the hardwood floor. Ciel couldn't move. He couldn't move because he couldn't feel, which was probably a blessing because _crack!_ went another finger. He watched, glazed and breathless, as the figure trembled, delighting in its work, and god, he wanted to wake up. He wanted to wake up. Why wasn't he waking up.

The figure snarled in his direction, raising its hand again, two of the fingers on it twisted savagely in impossible directions, and all Ciel could do was watch as it drove them into his right eye.

xx

Hey all! Sorry for the delay in release; my beta is having some family issues. Please keep **Ms-Psuedo-Writer** in your thoughts and send her kind messages, she's going through some really tough times right now. Thank you for all the kind reviews and constructive criticism! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'd really appreciate continued reviews to keep me motivated.


	5. June

_**Possessed  
><strong>__June_

With summer in full swing, it was both hot and rainy when the Phantomhive family arrived in the Emergency Room. Rachael had been too disturbed to cry, and Vincent just paced around the waiting room, buying sodas and crisps out of the vending machines just to keep his hands occupied with something, but never actually consuming anything. He simply uncapped and recapped the bottle, or rolled the bag of crisps over in his hands, crushing them as he fought to not simply _scream_. To scream might make him feel better, but he couldn't, not in front of Rachel. It would scare her. (Ciel was scaring her.) It would scare her more. (Unlikely.)

Logically, it wasn't wholly surprising when the surgeon came out and said "Mr and Mrs. Phantomhive, I have good news and bad news." Rachael expected more than he did, because she practically leapt to her feet, eyes seeming to brim with some sort of strange hope that not only did they save his eye, but they found out there was a fruit fly burrowing across the front of his brain, and _that_ was the cause for his behavior, how mad! Anyway, he'd be perfectly fine, good as new, better than before, even. Vincent saw that hope in her eyes and it worried him, so he placed an arm around her, protecting her from the venom he could taste in the air before it came from the surgeon's mouth.

"The good news is that he's going to be okay." Vincent glared. A poor choice of words. "The bad news is that the damage to his eye was extensive. There was nothing we could do but… clean it up."

He practically _snarled_ at the man, and he would have hit him if Rachael hadn't finally burst into tears. The surgeon looked uncomfortable, but he said no more until her shrieks dulled into silent tears. They couldn't see him tonight, he'd explained, but tomorrow he'd be ready for visitors. _Tomorrow_, he'd promised. Vincent was angrier that night than he could ever remember being – it was a dull rage, directed at anything, at everything, at _God_. For cursing his son. His perfect, beautiful son was now mutilated and probably insane, and there was nothing he could do. And he was _seething_ with a hatred he couldn't direct at anything, and he _hated_ that.

It took some convincing, but the Phantomhives went home. Neither actually _slept_, but they did manage to lay in bed together, each silently comforting the other from the misery that both were feeling. It was something, and something was better than nothing. _Clean it up_. That was all they could do. _Clean it up_. Ciel had made such a mess of his eye that the only way the surgeon could describe it was that he cleaned. It. Up. The fleshy pieces of his eye, ragged bits of destroyed cornea; every happy expression that eye had ever been a part of was now a memory. Now, the best they could hope for was a glass eye. It would never move with the other. It would simply be… still.

Unfeeling.

Unseeing.

Was that what Ciel was now? Just a glass person? Vincent feared for the worst. If he wasn't transparent now, he would be if the doctors recommended to send him to an institution. He knew what they did in institutions. Strapped people into chairs and gave them electroshock treatments until they got nice and quiet, or worse, he'd learned that they did something called _lobotomies_ a while ago. Did they still do that? He didn't know. From what he'd heard, it involved stabbing an ice pick through someone's eyeball and scratching at the front of their brain. It made them quiet. Did they still…

They couldn't possibly. It was barbaric. Surely only the _Americans_ did that? Only the Americans would be barbaric enough to be doing such things in 1967. No, it'd be okay. Everything would be okay.

_**Everything would be okay**_.

Because if it wasn't, Vincent had nothing.

The next morning, they returned to the hospital. Neither had slept at all, but they were both wide awake, almost raggedly wired from their despair. Ciel, however, was sleeping peacefully, head wrapped up in bandages and attached to an IV. The drugs were keeping him asleep, the doctors had explained to them, and that was better. He would be in shock if he woke up – the longer he had this comfort, the better. Rachel cried, reaching out and holding her son's hand, ignoring everything else but his face. His lovely face. Under those wrappings, it was mutilated by his own madness. What would they do? What could they do?

They stayed with him for the day, discussing treatment options with the doctor. To Rachel's, but not Vincent's, surprise, he was calling in a psychiatrist. "A really good one, Mr. and Mrs. Phantomhive. Really straight guy. He doesn't do any of that quack stuff from back in the day, he uses real methods that are proven to work. Medication and therapy and stuff, ma'am. He's good."

Rachel had frowned. "But… but you can't be _positive_ he has to go already, are you?"

He'd been a bit taken aback by that question, but hastily answered, "No ma'am, of course not. That's for the doctor to decide."

They were feeling a little better by lunch time, and both of them ate lightly in the hospital's cafeteria. Ciel would be coming off the drugs in a couple of hours, and the psychiatrist would be coming to see him. If everything was alright with his head, they could take him home! That was Rachel's thought process as she ate her way through an apple, eyes distant but hopeful as she brushed dust off of her dress. Vincent, on the other hand, was more realistic, and so he ate with less enthusiasm, although the groaning in his stomach couldn't allow him to stop entirely.

After lunch, they took a brief walk around the garden as the doctors woke Ciel, gently. First, they cut the bandages away from his sleeping face, which was properly cleaned and without evidence of his insanity except for the place where his eyelid caved inward. It would be a long time before Ciel Phantomhive could ever have a glass eye. They switched his IV to a lighter painkiller, and slowly, conscious returned to him. It was a strange feeling. A familiar feeling. The way one wakes up when they _know_ something is horribly wrong but they can't quite remember what it is, so there was a horrible feeling but he couldn't quite figure out why.

And then, he opened his eye. Only the one. The other one remained closed, a little bit of blood in the corners of them, which was a natural part of the surgical process. "Ciel," the nurse cooed at him. "Ciel Phantomhive, my name is Christine. I'm a nurse here at Saint Juniper's Children's Hospital. Can you hear me?"

He nodded. Damn, his head felt… heavy. His whole body felt heavy, but somehow it was light too. How did that work? He just wanted to get up. _Hospital_? That was somehow only just occurring to him. "Why am I in the hospital?" Why did his face feel so sore? What had he done? What had he _**done**_? In response to his growing panic, the heart monitor began to beep more rapidly, and the nurses quickly took notice. All at once, they were yelling at him to calm down, which did exactly the opposite, and one of them was stabbing a needle into his IV. It was too much. They were all _too loud_, and he groaned, lifting his heavy arms to cover his ears and the back of one of his hands brushing over his eye.

He froze.

And screamed.

It wasn't a high pitched shriek of horror, like the nurses had probably expected. It was more of a desperate yell. A terrified, _anguished_ groan, rubbing his palm over the lid because there was nothing underneath it. His eye was gone. His eye was _gone __**gone gone**_. Had he been in a car accident? Had he gotten in a fight? A million thoughts rushed to his aching head and in the seconds of horror he felt, screaming low and desperate, the contents of the second needle reached his bloodstream. And quickly as the anguish had come, it faded into calm. Everything was calm. Everything was _bliss_, in fact. The bustled around him, propping him up with pillows and making a show of getting him comfortable, one of them coming in with something for him to eat and the other pushing a TV remote in his hand.

He was calm now. He was _happy_. Everything was okay. He could do anything. Why was he laying around in bed? He wanted to see his parents, and tell them he loved them. Where were his parents? He must have communicated that out loud, because one of the nurses smiled warmly (she was pretty. Red lips, big blue eyes, hair pinned up in victory rolls, despite that they'd mostly gone out of style. She reminded him of how his mom had looked when he grew up) – and told him that "They'll be here soon, Ciel. Just relax until they get here."

And relax he did. He ate through the sweet portion of his standard issue hospital lunch and childishly refused to eat the turkey and salad, which seemed to amuse the nurses, although they eventually got him to eat some of both. He flipped through the TV channels, _not_ stopping on the coverage of the war but instead flipping on _Bewitched_. Nose wiggle, magic, laughtrack. He even laughed a little with it, and his attention was so focused on the television that he didn't really notice his parents come in. (How could he not?) He just didn't.

Rachel couldn't help but cry at the sight of him. He looked so… _normal_. Just sitting in bed, watching TV, a tray of food next to him, crumbs from a decimated brownie and only a couple bites of his healthy food properly eaten. Tears ran slowly down her face, and Vincent's arm secured around her waist as he cleared his throat. "Ciel? Turn off the TV, we came to see you."

Ciel blinked for a moment, taking several minutes longer than usual to process what he was saying before picking up the remote and flicking it off. "Dad. Mum. I missed you." He caught sight of their faces, both quite somber and Rachel's streaked with tears. "Why are you crying?"

The innocence of that question was odd. It wasn't as if he didn't _know_ his eye was missing – he did know, but in his drug-induced and undeniably lucid state, he didn't mind that fact. But the idea of the loss of his eye and the sadness on his parent's faces being connected simply didn't _occur_ to him. And the question elicited an even _stranger_ response from his parents than he'd expected; Vincent looked _angry_, and Rachel looked taken aback. And he flinched at his father's anger, just as any normal child would, the gesture in of itself so fucking _pathetic_ that Vincent deflated immediately, moving closer to him and squeezing his shoulder.

"Your mother's crying because she – we – were worried about you, Ciel. You…" He looked over at the doctor, who gave him an encouraging nod. "You hurt yourself. We're going to have a doctor come look at you and see if they can help you, okay?"

And what else could Ciel Phantomhive say but _okay_.

He spent a little time with his parents before Doctor Faustus arrived. The psychiatrist was a no nonsense sort, he could tell just by looking at him, and there was something about him that Ciel trusted, despite that he trusted almost no one. Those who had a strict foundation of their morals were predictable, and from what he was beginning to understand, predictable was good. It was safe. Maybe that was what he needed. He pawed every now and then at his eyelid, which caved inward, and the drugs in his system prevented that from being a painful experience. The nurses only stopped him when he tried to take off the bandages; he wasn't ready, they said. He wasn't ready. In the brief time they spent together, his mother had assured him repeatedly he wasn't in trouble, although Ciel doubted the integrity of her words. But it seemed as soon as they'd arrived, they were being ushered away, replaced by the no-nonsense doctor who introduced himself as Doctor Faustus.

Perhaps if Ciel hadn't been so medicated, he would have felt uneasy.

The questions were invasive, and to the point. Do you have any physical problems you are concerned about? Do you feel depressed or anxious? Have you ever had feelings about wanting to harm yourself before this incident? Do you use alcohol or drugs? Do you have problems with your temper? Do you worry a lot? Do you resent being given advice? Do you trust people? Do you care what people think of you? Are you comfortable in social situations? Do you ever hear voices? What is your greatest fear? They were straight forward and yet so _loaded_. He answered most of them in simple yes or nos, although some required greater thought than that; lately, everything seemed… different. Everything. The person he thought he was seemed less like someone he _knew_ and more like a façade that he experienced every now and then.

"Every day is like waking up from a nice dream, but then I realize that I'm alive in the nightmare. It's hard to explain."

Doctor Faustus showed virtually no emotion as he wrote down his answers, though, if Ciel had been paying greater attention, he might have seen the faintest hints of a smirk. He might have. But he didn't.

Once the evaluation was done, it took all of fifteen minutes for Vincent and Rachel Phantomhive to sign their child's life away. Dr. Faustus put on a particularly hard sell, and it wasn't as if they'd _known_ what they were doing. They thought it was for the best. To send their mentally ill child away where he could no longer harm himself, and maybe get the treatment he really needed; no sound parent could deny him that, when the doctor was throwing around words like _paranoid schizophrenia_ and _suicidal tendencies_. No, of course they couldn't. In his dreamy haze, his parents drifted back inside, kissing his forehead and hugging him loosely around the neck, telling him he was going to take a long rest. They'd send his things to the hospital, they promised. And Ciel was so confused. He held on to them, mumbled about how he didn't want to go, squeezed the material of their clothing but not tight enough, because it seemed like all-too quickly, they were gone.

They were gone.

Life-altering decisions always deserve a second opinion, you have to understand that. But the problem with Ciel Phantomhive is that any other doctor who came in and asked the same questions would have reported the same findings.

Momentarily, he felt frightened. So he slept. Dreamlessly, though not for long, and he felt uncomfortably sweaty when he woke up, the way people always do when they go to sleep in the day and wake up after the sun has set. The nurses from earlier had already clocked out of their shifts, and the evening brought different ones, who were considerably less sweet to him, or perhaps it was his medication and the honey-glaze high that the day had carried wearing off. Or perhaps, after all these years, some part of him was still afraid of the darkness, and what the darkness brought. The cafeteria was closed, so he gave one of the kinder seeming nurses some money, so that on her lunch break when she ran to her favorite cornerstore, would she please bring him something?

He dozed off sometime after finishing his dinner, which wasn't the quality of food he was used to but it did the job, and the next morning came too quickly. At 6am, he was shaken awake, given breakfast and a needle full of light pain medication, and told that the streetcar would be there for him in an hour.

The hospital he was taken to was new. Not dilapidated the way one expected mental hospitals to be; in fact, the words _mental_ or _lunacy _were not in its name at all. It had a perfectly innocent name; Saint Peter's Hospital. Not _for the criminally insane_, or _for troubled youth_; it was simply Saint Peter's. Some part of him appreciated this fact, just as some part of him appreciated that his parents hadn't sent him off to Bethlem. After all, Bethlem was much closer to home than St. Peter's; he wasn't entirely sure where they were when the car finally pulled into its destination, but he had sat in silence in the backseat for a very long time. Bethlem was closer to home, but he didn't want to go there. Not with its history; it seemed to him that a place like that would be painted in blood.

St. Peter's was _new_. The building's architecture was new, the floors were shiny, the walls gleamed with fresh paint; it didn't look like a mental hospital at all, but the sort of facility that specializes strictly in certain ailments, and monopolizes on the fact that if a person has that one ailment, they'll have to come there, or die. And Ciel supposed that… in a way, that's what this place was. But instead of treating rare cancers, it treated invisible sickness with very visible repercussions. The walls were lined with posters discussing recovery, how it's easy to quit drinking if only you _believe_ in yourself, and he felt an odd glimmer of hope in that lobby.

Maybe it was because he'd actually hit rock bottom, and was beginning to realize it. Maybe it was because his parents had decided they didn't believe in him either, and sent him here. Maybe it was because he'd ripped out his eye with his fingers, and remembered _watching himself do it_, but no pain. Maybe it was because he really was insane.

But he felt just a twinge of hope.

His first day and night were virtually painless; once the streetcar dropped him off, he filled out a few forms (mostly just confirming what his parents had written about his allergies and medical history), and then a nurse gave him a little plastic cup with about eight different pills in it. Wrinkling his nose, he went through about four small cups of water (which seemed to annoy her) to get them all down, and within half an hour, he was asleep. And he _slept_ for what felt like the first time in years. It was dreamless, and uninterrupted, yet when he woke up, there was no sense of time being robbed from him. No feeling of five minutes of rest, when in reality hours had passed. No, he felt _rested_, and knew a lot of time had come and gone, and he found himself looking around his room, trying to orient himself.

He was in a hospital now. That's right. Not the children's hospital, but a _mental_ hospital. Because he'd torn out his eye. That was what had happened. The idea made his stomach drop out, his heart sink, and a sense of alarming, overwhelming dread overtake him. The offended side of his face throbbed painfully, and he glanced over to his bedside table. His suitcase remained unpacked, but a note had been left for him to call the nurses as soon as he was awake. A small remote with a single, red button set atop it.

They arrived, gave him more medication, and changed his bandages. The dull pain that had been growing quickly disappeared, and suddenly he found himself severely chauffeured. The room his parents had paid for had no roommate, and apparently that knowledge was spreading quickly. A couple of the younger patients gave him dirty looks, mumbling something about spoiled, wealthy children. It might have bothered him once, but the medication which hummed through his bloodstream sang him delicious, precious _calm_. He clung to it viciously. There were a number of on-site therapists, he soon learned. Group therapists, individual therapists, even therapists who used art and music as treatment. That all sounded very stupid to Ciel, but he didn't mention anything about it. The nurses and orderlies were kind enough.

There were a large number of medical doctors as well. Even in his sweetly drugged state, he had a vague understanding of what that meant. The doctors would be the ones strapping him to gurneys and attempting to electrocute the madness out of him. The therapists would be sanctuary. Talking never hurt anyone, but lobotomies were an entirely different story.

He met his therapist first. Doctor Faustus, again. Apparently, while there were many therapists on site, there were very few choices in terms of _children's_ psychiatry. He was, after all, a child. Faustus was the only one who strictly took underaged patients, and so Ciel was shuffled off to him for most of the morning. The man asked him quite a few of the same questions he'd asked before, perhaps hoping for a response that was less influenced by pain medication, and Ciel did his best to answer them properly. But what frustrated him was that Faustus (who, after an hour together, took off his glasses and said to call him _Claude_ with a smile that made him blood go cold) didn't seem to want to believe there was a _start_.

Ciel frequently alluded to the start. When _this_ began. Whatever this was. But each time he began, Fau- _Claude_ would interrupt him. Claude told him that the sort of behavior that lands one in a place like this does not have a definitive start. The start isn't what important, it's the trigger. _Trigger_, a word he would come to associate with denial. Claude told him that there had to have been a traumatic event in his life that had begun to trigger Ciel's violent behavior, and he found himself going from frustrated to _angry_. His parents, even his desperate _father_ were better listeners than this! And yet every time he attempted to explain, he was cut off.

He felt… resorted. Like his thoughts were being picked apart and pieced where they didn't belong, and he left the extraordinarily long session (an orderly had told him that the first session usually lasted several hours) to his first doctor's appointment. By that time, he was too exhausted to even bother fighting off the sense of dread he felt in the pit of his stomach. Maybe the doctor wouldn't start the really terrible treatments immediately, maybe he'd just want to see his eye. Or maybe the complete lack of eye would make the lobotomy procedures all the easier.

Not unlike his therapist, his doctor was surprisingly young, but _unlike_ his therapist, his demeanor was entirely different.

"Good afternoon, Ciel. Please sit down. I'm Sebastian Michaelis, I'll be overseeing the medical aspects of your treatment here."

Michaelis's office wasn't as cozy as any of the therapy rooms, opting for a more sterile, medical environment, but there was almost a sense of relief in being there. Therapy was all about tricking the patient into a false sense of comfort and security, offering comfortable couches, rich colors, and lots of toys to keep the hands busy. But this, this was… professional. More than that, it was _stark_. There was no lying or tricks, both of them were completely exposed, just as Ciel felt at every normal doctor he'd ever been to. This… seemed more normal. Maybe that, in and of itself, was the trick. Nonetheless, he nodded and sat down, letting Sebastian prod him for his vitals.

"How is your eye feeling today?"

"Alright. It was bleeding this morning, but the nurses cleaned it up."

Michaelis nodded. "That's to be expected, post surgery. Do you mind if I take off your bandages for a better look?"

Ciel shrugged noncommittally, but flinched under his doctor's hands. The flinch surprised himself more than the doctor, it seemed, because Sebastian carefully removed them and pulled out a flashlight, examining the offended area, opening his eyelids, and making a few notes. The process wasn't comfortable; the area was rather tender, and his stitches prickly, but overall not terribly painful. After a moment, Sebastian tossed his gloves in a wastebasket and sat back down across from him, clipboard in hand. "Everything looks fine. I expect you'll heal well, and once you've completely healed, we can see about getting you a glass eye, if that's something you'd be interested in."

Ciel blanched slightly at the word _glass_, but nodded. "Yeah."

The doctor smiled, and it was far less unsettling of a smile than anything Faustus had done. In fact, despite that Ciel didn't trust anyone in this abominable place whatsoever, the atmosphere here was far less unsettling than the rest of the building.

He didn't settle into a routine quickly because every day of his first week was different. The only thing that remained constant were his wake up time, his lights out time, and his mealtimes. The orderlies kept that schedule strict. On his second day there, he spent several hours in the visitor's lounge with his parents. On the third day, he was with Doctor Faustus from breakfast to dinner, eating all his meals in his office and so miserably stir crazy by the end of the evening that he nearly snapped and started screaming at him. The fourth day, he ended up spending a solid two hours with Doctor Michaelis, as he fiddled around with Ciel's eye and removed a few of the surgical stitches.

Despite this, the first week really wasn't terrible. His medication kept him asleep at night, and his temper seemed to be calming down. In fact, _all_ of his symptoms seemed to be waning, and at the end of that first week, he was looking better. A bit of color was returning to his face, a bit of control to his seemingly explosive mind. Once he entered group therapy, things changed.

The other patients treated him like a novelty. He was one of very few adolescent patients, and was probably the only one of them that – in their eyes – needed to be there. His teenaged company included a girl who suffered an eating disorder (why would someone just refuse to eat? He didn't get it) and a woman who was apparently a lesbian. Was that really enough to get locked up? Her parents had been the ones to commit her, not a doctor, so the institution was sucking her parent's money away by cutting her off from women her age. Instead, she was pursuing a relationship with a much older woman with a history of violence. Ciel might have found this amusing, once.

The young adults, 18 through 24, in his group therapy were mostly there for various addictions. He had nothing in common with these people. But _that_ wasn't why things were bad. Things became bad when he stopped sleeping again. Every night, he'd leave Claude's office, head straight to Sebastian's for one last check up on his eye (the socket was being temperamental, and Michaelis seemed to think infection was imminent) and he would go to bed. But as if his temporary healing had been a bad joke, the dreams began to return. So did the violence. Ciel, who for the first week some of the orderlies and nurses were wondering why he was even there, was suddenly screaming all through the night, smashing his head into the concrete walls, biting his wrists open and scratching words into his thighs and arms. And the transformation was so fucking _sudden_, every night. At 8pm, he would retreat to his room to read until the medication kicked in.

By 10pm, he would be sound asleep.

And by midnight, he would be fucking crazy.

Numerous times, Doctors Michaelis and Faustus were called in. Sebastian would treat whatever wounds he would have sustained, and Faustus would watch him with an almost predatory stare, waiting _desperately_ to witness an outburst. But it never happened. No sooner would they be in the building would Ciel collapse in the heap, lucid but trembling, clutching his wounds and mumbling about how it was gone. They had only the surveillance tapes and the stories from the orderlies and nurses to go on, and the tapes really didn't tell much.

Time went by, and he withdrew. His diet was closely monitored, and he was forced to eat a certain number of calories a day, but his meals were tasteless. Every interaction with his fellow patients left him blinking, wondering if it had actually happened or if he had simply been imagining it. His life, a half-remembered dream, that had once seemed so _**real**_ but now was half there. His parents visited, and sometimes they brought Elizabeth, and those might have been the only times he felt really alive. He smiled with them, laughed at Lizzie's jokes, but more than that he clung to their presence, and the idea that if he was _once_ like them, he could someday _be_ like them.

Although his visits with Sebastian become fewer and far between after the last of his stitches are taken out, he looked forward to them. As much as he looked forward to anything. Sebastian wasn't a bad conversationalist, and because he wasn't an actual therapist, there wasn't ulterior motive behind his questions. When they casually talked, it was just that. _Casual_. Sebastian never asked things like 'and why do you think you feel that way?' or 'what sort of effect do you think that had on your life?'. They just talked. Sometimes their appointments ran very long, and Ciel wondered if Sebastian's politeness was starting to get him into trouble, since he seemed incapable of telling Ciel to shut up and leave. He sort of appreciated that, he supposed. It was something.

Claude both changed and increased with medications towards the end of the month. As his sleeping medications were essentially useless, he took Ciel off them completely, and opted for a new, powerful sedative. His episodes at night didn't stop, but it essentially meant he was silent during the day. Therapy was like pulling teeth, and his group therapist had all but given up attempting to engage him. Even his parents began skipping visitations.

As June drew to a listless close, Ciel Phantomhive's death drew ever closer. Waiting for him. He had six months to live, and no one was the wiser.

xx

Amnfdmnfvdc sorry this took forever. I got suck writing angst, mostly because I'm not very _good_ at writing angst, but here's to hoping this comes out alright. It is about twice as long as usual, so perhaps it was worth the wait. Thanks for your patience, and I would love some words of encouragement.


	6. July

_**Possessed  
><strong>__July_

English summers were Ciel's favorite time of the year. July, in particular, brought pleasant warmth – highs of only around 75 degrees every day; and in the evenings it dropped just below sixty. The rain wasn't constant, nor was it particularly dreary, it was just a simple fact that at one point, every day, it would rain for just a little while. Then it would clear up, and the ground would feel freshly watered, the concrete streets as freshly renewed as if they were the unending pastures of the English countryside. This particular summer, he saw very little of the season. His time was spent shut inside, talking out his issues, discussing his relationship with family, and growing steadily more and more accustomed to only having one eye. It was, by far, the worst summer of his life. And it would be his last.

His behavior was a mystery. To him, more than anyone. As if the sunlight itself was exorcising the madness out of him, he would become lucid around sunrise every morning, just as the night staff were leaving, weak and weary, from a night of dealing with his "fits". That was what Claude called them – Dr. Faustus had, with a leer that seemed to stretch across his face unnaturally, insisted that Ciel call him by his Christian name. _Claude_. It seemed wrong, falsely intimate and personal, but he did as he was told. He did so because after several weeks of being in the hospital, he learned about things that seemed unholy in their own right.

Patients had stories. Stories that had to be told behind cupped hands, in hushed words, because it was a trigger and they weren't supposed to talk about it. Stories about how _Claude_ would take a liking to a certain number of patients, and those whom he _didn't_ like would regularly end up in alternative forms of therapy. Not the kind where you got to play around in the art room, finger painting and listening to the radio, which Ciel learned quickly enough really _was_ a treat. A stark contrast to the life he left behind. No, Claude sent the patients he didn't favor to sterile rooms, strapped them down to gurneys and forced a bar in their mouth so that when he attempted to electrocute the fight out of them, they wouldn't bite off their own tongues.

There were the ice cold baths. The beatings. The isolation. The brain surgery. Despite Ciel's_ fits_, he hadn't had to endure any of that. And the other patients watched him not with jealousy, an emotion he would have understood, but with something like wariness. Like they knew it was only a matter of time. And maybe it was.

Everyone's time was doomed, inevitably, to run out.

In their wariness, he found the patients eventually stopped trying to talk to him at all. They engaged him a little in group therapy, when he was aware enough to participate. Usually, he was so heavily medicated, or so exhausted from a night of feeling like his very _self_ was going to burst from his body (something he neglected to mention to Claude. He didn't want to come off any crazier, and the man's affection for him suddenly run out, in favor for some of the more brutal treatments) – usually, he was so exhausted that he didn't say a word. Or simply grunted an affirmative when addressed. But every now and then, he came out of it. Talked a little. But it was after dinner that this particular patient pulled him aside, and he regarded her with concern; she _looked_ mad.

That was laughable. So did he. They were both mad.

"I need to tell you something."

She looked nervous. She _was_ nervous. Her eyes looked worse than his, and he'd torn one of his out with his bare hands. They were blotched, swollen from crying, permanently red and the dark rings underneath them suggested she hadn't slept in years. She folded and unfolded her hands together, casting a glance over her shoulder as he nodded, letting her tuck him away into a corner. He arched a brow, waiting for her to continue, but she just pressed her lips together, looking at him imploringly. As if she expected him to know.

He scowled, and she flinched. "Go on then. Tell me something."

Ciel nearly regretted his words; for a moment, she looked like she was going to burst into sobs, which he really wasn't mentally prepared to deal with. He was just so tired. So many nights of groaning in agony, _feeling_ them (he was fairly sure it was a Them now, not an It, but these were facts he'd neglected to mention to Claude) gut him. So many nights struggling as he was slowly disemboweled and forced to live through every moment. And the agony of having one's abdomen slit open and coils of intestines removed methodically was _nothing_ in comparison to the agony of the _nausea_. The gutting, that wasn't real. Every morning, when they let him go, when he clutched his stomach, he was still, _mostly_ in one piece.

(Except for that morning he hadn't been, and he'd ended up here.)

But every morning, the nausea was real. The retching and dry-heaving and feeling like if he could only just _die_, it'd be so much better. A relief from that incredible nausea, just one moment's, would be worth never seeing anything or anyone again.

But she didn't burst into sobs. A couple of silent tears dripped down her face, but she looked at him resolutely, lips trembling. "Alois Trancy." She flinched at the words, despite them being her own, looking around like a child, guilty of uttering a Bad Word. But no one was looking at them, not even the orderlies. Patients were allowed, indeed encouraged, to talk to one another. Build support systems and make friends.

He blinked at her. Alois Trancy. The words were so bizarre coming out of her mouth, he almost wouldn't have guessed it a _name_. It sounded more like fanciful French, the way it blurred together, the way it sounded like the name of a fairy tale character. Though he was one to talk. _Phantomhive_. Whoever heard of anyone with a name like that.

"Alois Trancy?"

She flinched again, but nodded. "Claude liked him too."

Her words stayed with him, as few as they had been, for the next few hours. But like all nights, the pain was universal, distracting, and all consuming. It was a language everyone not only understood, but understood from birth. Most nights, it felt like he was being eaten. Other nights, it felt like he was being raped and eaten. Rarely did it deviate from either of those things, and frequently he woke up with some form of physical damage. The worst nights were when they sedated him, but not enough. If they sedated him properly, all the pain, all the fear, everything would disappear. And in its stead, nothing. Peaceful, blank sleep. Some nights, they didn't sedate him enough. He wasn't sure if it was because he simply _couldn't_ be sedated, or if it was because the nurses were inept and misdosed him. On those nights, his body would thrash, and he would scratch and scream and sweat and cum and _hurt_, but inside, it would be like his life was drained to slow motion.

Every moment lasted five. And the night would be an eternity.

His only consistent, steady point was his time with Sebastian. And Sebastian never seemed to be able to turn him down. Considering he was almost always doing some kind of physical damage to himself in the night, he always had a reason to go, and he noticed that his doctor took slow, deliberate care in nursing his wounds. In doing so, the professional, sterile environment that was Sebastian's office was violated, and it became something else. Something better, and comforting.

They talked a lot. Sebastian would slowly bandage him up, and Ciel would tell him what he didn't tell Claude. He would discuss how he felt every night, tell him when he thought it started, and Sebastian would listen, but rarely provide useful feedback. Perhaps all of the psychobabble had gotten to him, but Ciel had grown so accustomed to talking everything out that every secret he kept from Claude almost _spilled_ from him the moment he came in contact with Sebastian. And almost as if Claude knew this, he pressed. Their seats grew closer and closer, and he noticed his therapist became more and more handsy with him. It started as subtle, "comforting" touches to the shoulder, which slowly, everslowly got lower. In the last session, Claude's fingers made it to his thigh.

Ciel wasn't afraid of that. Sex. He didn't burst into sobs and run screaming like a prudish woman afraid for her virtue. In fact, he simply sat very still, continuing on with his conversations as if nothing was different. He was beginning to realize that maybe having a violent episode might have been a better idea – Claude seemed to take his lack of reaction as a challenge. Maybe even encouragement. Ciel didn't really know. Nevertheless, he would walk quickly, unaroused, with a cold sweat running down the back of his neck from these sessions - he'd walk straight past the cafeteria and straight to Sebastian. The orderlies didn't even try to stop him anymore; they were under the impression Ciel hurt himself in each of Claude's sessions, or maybe Claude was using some radical new treatment on him. Nevertheless, he would walk briskly to Sebastian's office, tell the good doctor something was hurting, sit down, and start talking.

It was the middle of the month before he finally had the gall to bring up what he'd been thinking about non-stop.

"Hey. Sebastian."

The doctor looked up from Ciel's bloody knee, which he was cleaning, and arched a brow. "Yes?"

"Er…" He didn't really know how to bring it up casually. The woman who'd told him about him had seemed terrified to even say his name. Would she be punished if he relayed the information? Would _he_? He pursed his lips. No, of course he wouldn't. This was Sebastian. Sebastian was his rock. The only safe thing in this abominable hospital. Sebastian was the person he could talk to about anything, and did. And Sebastian was the only one who regarded his words with indifference and maybe a warm smile. It wasn't a perfect reaction, of course, but it was far better than pumping him full of antipsychotic drugs. Sebastian was safe. It would be okay.

"Do you know anyone named Alois Trancy?"

At this, his doctor did the last thing Ciel would have expected from him. He _laughed_. "Ah, that tired ghost story? I didn't _know_ him, personally. But everyone knows of him."

"Ghost story? So he died?"

"Yes. Quite some time ago. Twenty, thirty years? I think he was a war orphan."

Ciel was intrigued. Within that timeline, he really could have only been a war orphan to World War II. His mental image of Alois, a French boy of high birth, changed to something a bit more twisted. A once-wealthy child whose parents might have been executed by Nazis during the occupation of France? Maybe he watched it happen, and went mad? But how would he have ended up _here_, of all places. He was suddenly brimming with questions, and Sebastian smiled like an indulgent parent and continued.

"The story goes that Alois Trancy came sometime during the Second World War. He was mad, spoke no English at all, but many people in this country were bilingual to the languages spoken by the Axis powers. _Supposedly_, he was the child of a Nazi, and had gone crazy from the atrocities he'd seen at war." Again, Ciel's mental image shifted. No longer French, Alois became older in his mind, a cruel looking German teenager, narrow eyes and sunken cheeks, eyes crazed from seeing Nazi experiments on Jewish captives. "For whatever reason, he was sent here. The institution was brand new back then, and was less of a mental hospital and more of a general hospital, but St. Peter's was quite revolutionary for its time. There were attempts made to treat patients psychiatrically, rather than simply locking them away in cells, covered in their own filth.

"Whatever he was here for, Alois supposedly stayed for a little less than a year, and then he died. The circumstances for his death were… unusual. That's why his story is told; many patients die in mental hospitals, or hospitals in general, it's simply a part of the trade. But Alois… Alois was different."

Ciel could hardly contain himself, but he kept his voice steady, almost indifferent as he asked "How so?"

Sebastian smiled, wrapping the last of the gauze around Ciel's knee. "Alois Trancy died in a demonic exorcism."

He left Sebastian's office very quiet, still overwhelmed with questions that he'd felt were too stupid to ask. Twenty, _thirty_ years ago? There was no way Claude had been there. Claude might not have even been _born_ the year Alois was committed; the therapist was severe, but distinctly young looking, just like Sebastian. Ciel had no idea the institution was even that old. Everything seemed so fresh and immaculate, as if there'd been a massive renovation completed a couple days before he'd arrived. All the technology was new, all the lamp fixtures were modern, all the marble was fresh; not even the architecture of the building looked like it could have ever existed in the 30's or 40's. And yet, it had.

In the days that followed, Ciel began to feel better. There was an influx of new patients, and all of the staff could be found wandering the halls, listening to interviews on tape, or making notes well after their shifts normally would have ended. Ciel suspected that their presence, the overwhelmingly _human_ presence of so many more people around than usual, was what was helping him. But he was actually getting some sleep. He still had fits every night, but they didn't last as long as usual, nor were they as painful. In fact, the better he looked, the more ragged everyone else looked. Even Claude, who was always utterly immaculate, was beginning to look disheveled as he worked triple shifts, not leaving the building for 72 hours straight in an attempt to keep up with all of the new additions to St. Peter's. Whatever the reason, Ciel felt like he was breathing for the first time in months. And it was wonderful.

His family came to visit, bringing Elizabeth in tow, and he received permission to actually go _outside_ to walk with them while they visited. Other patients were allowed to do this all the time, so long as there was an orderly following like a shadow, but Ciel was a Problem Patient, and therefore hadn't actually been able to leave the building's confines in nearly two months.

And it was incredible. He'd never been one to particularly relish the outdoors before, but it'd been so long, and the July weather was so sweet, he'd momentarily considered making a run for it. But there was no chance for true escape, really. If he managed to make it through the gate, he'd still be on foot, and it would be a while before he could make it to a bus station. And even that, he wouldn't be able to use, because Ciel had no pocket money. There was a little bit in his suitcase in his room, but that was so far away. So instead of running, he just walked with his family, even held hands with Elizabeth because that was what she wanted, and he _owed_ her something. After all he'd put her through, he owed her at least this.

His parents regarded him with cautious hope. They seemed to see the change in his health as well – he looked distinctly less sick and weak since the last visit, where Rachel had left crying, and Elizabeth hadn't been brought along at all. When their goodbyes were bade, Rachel promised to bring Ciel some home-cooked meals, since she'd had a talk with his oh-so-kind therapist, Dr. Faustus, who'd _oh-so-kindly _ given them permission to bring Ciel food and sweets from home, even a few books, since Ciel was tearing his way through the library, and running out of fiction to read. This display of kindness worried Ciel, so he forced a _thank you_ as he passed his therapist and, once again, went straight for Sebastian's office, under the guise that he had a headache.

Time passed slowly. When he was too exhausted to function during the daytime, it was like there was no time; he'd blink during group and open his eyes to find himself in Claude's office, blink again and be at dinner, blink again and be contorted terribly, spine cracking as he howled at the orderlies who tried to sedate him. But in his awareness, time _became_ something again, and he didn't necessarily like it. His hours of therapy with Claude dragged, and his therapist's touch became more and more difficult to ignore. It almost _burned_. Not figuratively, the way one flinched from molestation, but it _literally_ felt scalding. Like underneath his skin, Claude's blood was boiling. Still, Ciel kept quiet about it, although his discomfort became more and more evident. If Claude rubbed his neck (one of his favorite things to touch, it seemed), Ciel would break into sweats, his temperature rising under his therapist's fingers.

It all seemed so _hot_. And it was trying his patience. The urge to slap him away, kick him in the groin, run, _escape_ this place grew with every day of his incarceration. His parent's visits only served to tease him, to give him a literal taste of what freedom would be, in the form of his mother's delicious casseroles, curries, sometimes the smell of Elizabeth's lipgloss as it clung to his cheek. He never wiped it away in front of her, but his enthusiasm for even _her_ presence was disappearing.

The only person he ever cared about seeing anymore was Sebastian.

And so it really shouldn't have been a surprise when, after an inspection of the empty socket of his eye, Sebastian pressed a rather sound, firm kiss to his lips.

xx

Relatively fast update! Hope you guys enjoy it. I'd appreciate some reviews, for those who are reading, and thank you to all who have been giving me the reviews/favorites/alerts/etc. Thanks a lot for the continual support.


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